


What You Left Behind

by backwards_silver



Category: Homeland
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Backstory, Pre-Season 5, why Quinn didn't come back from Syria
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:08:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26224693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/backwards_silver/pseuds/backwards_silver
Summary: A conversation between Quinn and Dar where Quinn learns that Carrie's moved on with another man and quit the agency for The Foundation.i.e. Why Quinn didn't look for Carrie after his mission in Syria.
Relationships: Carrie Mathison & Peter Quinn, Carrie Mathison/Peter Quinn, Dar Adal & Peter Quinn, Dar Adal/Peter Quinn
Comments: 5
Kudos: 16





	What You Left Behind

**Author's Note:**

> This came into my mind and I HAD to write it. I've always wondered why Quinn never came back to Carrie after his original mission in Syria ended, so my only thought is that by the time he came back, she'd already started her new life. 
> 
> What do you guys think? I'm considering adding chapters to this, but I might leave it as a one-shot, even though it's angsty.

Dar looked up in surprise at the figure tapping on his heavy glass door. Quinn breezed through it without waiting for an answer, face set seriously, all business. Dar hadn't even known that Quinn was back in the country, much less back so soon, looking no worse for the wear physically, but his eyes betrayed his dead tiredness. His skin was tanned from the desert sun, eyes a faded but still piercing blue, jaw set tensely, Dar could read it in his expression, he was weary.

"Peter, you're here for the next briefing, I assume?" Dar played ignorant.

"No. I'm done. Out, I mean it. The mission was a success, we're all out safe, now I'm leaving."

"We're back to this again, are we, Peter? I thought we'd already hashed this out the last time." Dar sighed an annoyed sound, disgust clear on his face. 

"We did, and somehow you always end up _needing me_ just when I'm finally fucking out, so cut the bullshit, Dar." Quinn didn't raise his voice, merely held his angry in a seething, menacing tone. He'd told himself for months, now, that this was the last mission he'd do.

After it was finished, he'd repeated to himself over and over, he would come back to the states and do something different. Maybe get into contact with Carrie after he was settled, see how she was doing. He didn't dare think about it, it hurt too much still, the wound felt fresh even after eight months overseas, burning up in the desert, far too much new grief and despair to accomplish healing of any kind.

" _You_ cut the bullshit, Peter. You and I both know, the only way this world goes around in any semblance of peace is because of the work that soldiers like yourself do. Don't play dumb with me, you will always be needed by this agency and by the group. And besides, what are you going to do with your life? Join the likes of Carrie Mathison and become an ignorant civilian? The fact that she still holds a security clearance after turning a blind eye to everything she and this agency has worked for is a fucking miracle to me." Dar waved a dismissive hand, disgruntled, his distaste for Carrie was no secret. 

Quinn swallowed hard, trying to ignore the emotions her name brought up. He knew she'd left the agency but beyond that he hadn't heard anything else, neither had he asked. He had been knee-deep in suicide bombers, IEDs, rebel armies overtaking small villages, desecrating the towns and murdering anyone who dared be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Carrie had been in his mind, but solely because he could never get her out.

In his dreams, she was the one sliver of light pulling him back from the edge, so often he was restless, wandering, lost, and somehow always chasing her unattainable figure. Same in dream-state as in life, he figured. He'd tried to set up a gate around his mind, lock her out, surround his heart with barbed wire and concrete as insurmountable as the compounds that kept out the forces of death. 

But she was inescapable. So here he was. 

"Just _stop_ , Dar. I told you I wanted out a long time ago, this time I fucking mean it." He didn't try to hide his anger, let it shine through fully in his eyes and the clenched fists at his sides. He wanted to full body slam Dar against the wall and choke the leering, haughty smirk off his face. But he held back, he'd done it once before, and it hadn't served him well at all, only helped to cement the fact in Dar's mind that he was incapable of making logical decisions when it involved Carrie, that he turned into putty in the hands of his mentor anytime her influence lingered in the air.

"I'm sure you do. You have many times before," Dar sneered, shaking his head, "Only this time, I know exactly why you want it." He sat back in his chair, hands intertwined in his lap, a casual air of indifference across his face. "You plan to go back to that psychotic witch of a woman, don't you? She's got you on a goddamn leash! Never did one generous thing in her life, not a single sympathetic bone in her body and yet all you men fall at her feet like fucking clowns." He hissed.

At Quinn's incensed, silent glare, he nodded, confirming his own point like he knew it was true.

"You'd be hard pressed to know she's moved on entirely, Peter," He sighed, dramatically, tsking and shaking his head in feigned mournfulness.

"What are you talking about?" 

"I'm afraid she's not only left the agency and gotten a new job, but also found a new man in her life, moved to Berlin, for christ's sake, all happy and domestic with her shiny, new lawyer boyfriend. It's a shame, really, she had so much to offer. Now she wastes her days with the likes of Otto During, both of them do." He rubbed a hand thoughtfully over his mouth, not looking at Peter, fake sadness dripping off his words. 

Quinn stood stunned, his heart cracking apart inside his chest, each shallow breath painful to his core. He didn't trust himself to breathe a word, so he didn't answer. Dar turned, noting the carefully concealed heartbreak in his eyes, the strength he summoned to cover the gaping fractures in his soul. Quinn gulped down the boiling emotions threatening to rupture out of him, the tiny little pieces of glass inside his being were threatening to form together and rip him down the middle once more.

 _No_ , it wasn't enough to be ruined and rejected once, this was worse than the first time. She had brushed him off with a flippant, _"Don't pressure me,"_ the first time. Painless for her, if not for him, the answer had given her the ability to back out gracefully if she so chose to, she didn't have to answer to him for either a yes or a no, just silenced his questions with a predictable tone of _'I have bigger things to worry about'._

So he'd left, there wasn't a question in his mind about what was the right thing to do in that scenario, sit around waiting for her inevitable put-off while his men were dying, or join them and fight? But a few months in, when the death and anguish were growing too much to bear, when the soldiers were growing closer to finishing their original objective, he'd started to doubt once more. Wondered if he'd put too much on her when he'd asked, if she'd had time to think about things and decide whether she wanted to be with him or not.

It hadn't been an outright no, so he figured he would go back home, as soon as loose ends were tied up in Syria, and he'd see what awaited him. He'd finally get out of the increasingly dark hole he was in with the agency, and Dar Adal's group, and he would find a future that didn't involve war and taking lives, seeing innocent people die in front of his eyes in gruesome ways.

"If I didn't know any better, Peter, I'd say she took a page out of your ideal life and made it her own," Dar continued, lacing the arrow he intended to shoot with poison before letting it fly. "Got out of the agency, took her kid to a quaint little apartment in the city, moved in with the German fool, all in a few month's time. She made quick work of it, too."

The look on Quinn's face showed that the arrow had hit it's mark.

It was a dagger through his most vulnerable parts. Carrie had made her answer very firmly, obviously plain by swiftly moving on with another man, closing the door on her life that involved anyone from the agency, including Quinn, _definitely_ Quinn.

She hadn't even asked about him, as far as he was aware, made no attempt to contact him, only packed her things and got as far away as she could, to start something anew, a job so clearly antipodal of the agency that it was like she was trying to set both a figurative and literal ocean between herself and her past.

The past that Quinn was so clearly apart of. 

He had nothing more to say to Dar, his hopes were gone like a lance had just been jabbed through a balloon. 

_"This...Being home. Normal life, you know? It feels good."_

In eight months of dry heat and soul-crushing war, he felt like a different person, but no amount of time had ever cut that last thread between him and sanity, _Carrie_. She'd been keeping him going up until this very moment, some wishful part of him had dreamed that she might be waiting for him when he came back.

No such luck.

 _Damn, Carrie Mathison._ She sure knew how to let a guy down easy...

"Where do you need me?" Quinn was resigned, now, quieter than before, a hardened shell quickly emptying of everything good and pure left inside of him. Weakness molding into cold, hard granite.

Dar didn't bother to hide his satisfaction, overwhelmingly pleased at the turn of events. He'd gotten exactly what he'd hoped for. Carrie Mathison had unknowingly chosen the most supportive path to his endeavors to get Peter back in the game with nothing to lose. If he didn't hate her so much, he'd have to thank her someday.

Dar could see the barely concealed desperation in Quinn's eyes, literal anguish threatening to bubble over his mask of indifference, so he generously decided not to goad the man any further. He'd gotten what he'd come for, and poor Peter had suffered enough, now he'd throw himself into his work with complete abandon as he had for so many years, life literally on the line for all he was worth, fighting for the only thing he had left to care about, his country.

"Al Raqqah," He said confidently, and Peter gave one short nod in return, "Rob will brief you, be at the airframe at thirteen hundred hours." Quinn gave a steely glare but the sharp intake of breath he took and firm set of his shoulders as he turned let Dar know that he'd be there.

"Oh and Peter?"

Quinn turned, halfway out the door.

"Don't forget what you're fighting for."

Quinn held back an angry sneer, merely let the door swing shut behind him as he left, ignoring the way Dar's smug leer made him sick to his stomach.

How the fuck could he forget what he was fighting for? He'd seen more death, violence, hatred and depravity in his less than forty years on the earth than most men ever saw in their entire lives. He would always be marked with death and darkness, he thought. Some people's lives were just born for it. Better for them to do the dirty work than to taint the _others_ \- _the normal, the civil, the type of person that Carrie now loved and shared her life with_ \- with it's horrors. 

The last thing Quinn did when he left the states was to bundle all the photos and letters he kept close to his heart in a small white envelope, to leave at his storage container. He had no plans to come back for a long time, and the last thing he needed was a tangible reminder of everything he'd loved and been hurt by the most.

On second thought, he kept one picture, a picture of a smiling, serene Carrie that he'd snuck on the night of her father's funeral. She hadn't noticed it then, but the moment had felt too good to pass up and he'd captured the look on her face and printed it later on, something he'd never done before, wanting to freeze that minute in time for all eternity. She was happy, she was at peace.

He'd replace the photo later, someday when he came back to this container, if he ever made it back alive. Until then, this one physical reminder of her would be his only companion in war besides his teammates, and it served as a reminder of why he'd left, and why he couldn't come back.


End file.
